Monday, August 26, 2013

“I saw God,” Fat states, and Kevin and I and Sherri state, “No, you just saw something like
God, exactly like God.” And having spoke, we do not stay to hear the
answer, like jesting Pilate, upon his asking, “What is truth?” - Philip K. Dick, VALIS.

In the months of February and March, 1974, Philip K. Dick met God, or something like
God, or what he thought was God, at least, in a hallucinatory
experience he chronicled in several obsessively dense diaries that
recently saw publication as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, a work of deeply personal theo-philosophical reflection akin to Carl Jung’s The Red Book.

Whatever it was he encountered - Dick was never too dogmatic about it - he
ended up referring to it as Zebra, or by the acronym VALIS, Vast Active
Living Intelligence System, also the title of a novel detailing the experiences of one very PKD-like character with the improbable name of “Horselover Fat.”
LSD-triggered psychotic break, genuine religious experience, or
something else entirely, whatever Dick’s encounter meant, he didn’t let
the opportunity to turn it into art slip by him, and neither did
outsider cartoonist and PKD fan Robert Crumb.

The
comic quotes directly from Dick’s telling of the event, which began with
a wisdom tooth extraction and was ultimately triggered by a golden
Christian fish symbol worn around the neck of a pharmaceutical delivery
girl.

Most PKD fans will be familiar with the story, whether they treat
it as gospel or not, but to see it illustrated with such empathetic
intensity by Crumb is truly a treat.

If you only know Crumb as the creator of lascivious Rubenesque women and schlubby, druggy horndog hipsters (like Fritz the Cat), you may be surprised by these emotionally realist illustrations.